Who Is Going To Support The Growing Senior Community?

In The News

For years, the editors at CE Pro magazines have been reporting how the senior and independent living communities is the next best market for home automation dealers and integrators. Now, the security market is joining the conversation, with Security Systems News publishing a story headlined “Security companies, others eye growth of PERS market.” Is this the next best thing? Are dealers as interested as the media? What do you see as your advantages, and your disadvantages? We’d like to know!

Here’s the story: YARMOUTH, Maine – With the market for personal emergency response systems projected to grow substantially in the coming years, it’s easy to see why financial analysts and security companies alike are taking an interest in it.

Fueled by factors such as an aging population, the potential cost savings for seniors who stay in their own home, and the relative resilience of the market, growth is in the forecast for PERS (personal emergency response systems). However, the projections tend to belie two important points: First, that it’s not easy for security companies to enter the PERS market, and second, the market is still defining itself from a technical standpoint.

A potential challenge to entering the market, according to Josh Garner, CEO of AvantGuard Monitoring Centers, based in Ogden, Utah, is that the barriers are not the same as those for traditional security companies.

“The biggest barrier to entry in the security industry might be technical skills, or how expensive and complex it is to start up a central station,” Garner said. “The PERS industry is not complex and not technically difficult. The biggest barrier to entry in the PERS industry is finding a market channel.”

Garner said a lot of PERS startups or companies adding PERS devices to their security offerings underestimate how difficult it is to identify and establish a market. The upshot is that these companies often end up spending a lot of money trying to find a marketing channel, but not getting anywhere because, Garner said, “they don’t find the right vein.”